Fresno nonprofit says voters blamed it for AI mailers from PAC with near-twin name
Fresno Building Healthy Communities says angry residents mistook it for Fresno Healthy Communities, the PAC behind AI-generated mailers attacking council candidate Naindeep Singh.
Fresno nonprofit says voters blamed it for AI mailers from PAC with near-twin name
Key Takeaways
- A PAC called Fresno Healthy Communities paid for AI-generated mailers attacking Fresno City Council District 1 candidate Naindeep Singh.
- Fresno Building Healthy Communities, an unrelated nonprofit, says residents contacted it in anger believing it sent the mailers.
- Campaign spending records list Alena Pacheco, wife of Fresno County Supervisor Brian Pacheco, as the PAC's treasurer.
- The PAC retracted a mailer accusing Singh of DUI after police said his drug test came back negative.
- A 2024 California law requires political committees to label ads that use AI-generated or substantially altered content.
The angry calls went to the wrong office.
Fresno Building Healthy Communities, a longstanding nonprofit in the city, says residents flooded it with messages after AI-generated mailers attacking City Council District 1 candidate Naindeep Singh showed up in their mailboxes. The mailers were paid for by a political action committee with almost the same name, Fresno Healthy Communities, and the nonprofit's CEO says that's no accident.
"We pride ourselves in government accountability and transparency. And when folks called and thought that we were behind some of these mailers, it really does hurt our reputation in our community," CEO Sandra Celedon told KFSN-TV, which first reported the complaint.
Election Day is Tuesday.
Who paid for the mailers
Campaign spending records name Solomon Verduzco as the PAC's controlling officeholder and Alena Pacheco as its treasurer. She's married to Fresno County Supervisor Brian Pacheco. The PAC is sponsored by a second committee, Central Valley Council, and Pacheco confirmed that one was founded by political consultant Alex Tavlian.
Tavlian told KFSN "no comment."
The same records show Tavlian's groups paid for ads opposing both Singh and Joaquin Arambula as council candidates. Arambula beat Verduzco in a 2024 race for the Assembly. Neither PAC has a website, so a voter holding one of the mailers has the committee name in the fine print to go on. Not much else.
Celedon said the naming is a pattern. In 2025, Tavlian introduced "One Fresno Coalition," close to a match for Mayor Jerry Dyer's One Fresno Foundation.
"They use names that have positive connotations, or that will help convey right messages, so that people don't actually look any further into it," she said.
What the mailers showed
Police stopped Singh in the Tower District on a Saturday night for expired registration tags and arrested him on suspicion of driving under the influence of drugs. Police Chief Mindy Casto later announced his toxicology test was negative and apologized to him. The first mailer, which accused Singh of "swerving through the Tower District," reached voters the day after that announcement, according to KFSN.
Its fine print called the image an illustration. Singh called it a deepfake.
In a statement, the PAC said the piece went to the Postal Service on Oct. 27, before the test result came back, and that it retracts the allegations. Thomas Holyoke, a Fresno State political science professor, told the station a retraction may not undo much in a close race.
On Friday, Singh showed KFSN two more AI-generated mailers from the same PAC. One put his picture beside President Donald Trump. The other suggested he'd want smoke shops and liquor stores across from elementary schools.
"That one was more just racist dog whistles," Singh said. "I've never met President Trump."
Rob Fuentes, Singh's opponent in District 1, said on social media the DUI mailer didn't come from his campaign and that he condemns it.
What the law requires
Under AB 2355, a state law passed in 2024, ads from political committees must carry a disclaimer if any content was "generated or substantially altered using artificial intelligence." The Fair Political Practices Commission can go after committees that don't comply. Reporting so far hasn't shown whether the Fresno mailers carried that exact language, or whether anyone has filed a complaint with the commission.
Halloween rain kept falling on the Tower District Saturday night, and trick-or-treaters went out anyway.
Celedon put it to voters another way.
"That's the other piece that I think people really need to ask themselves: What are they hiding from?" she said.
Central Valley AI is produced by the CVAI Newsdesk team and developed by Kaweah Tech, a regional firm that builds, deploys, and integrates AI solutions for businesses across California's Central Valley.